Little Weaver Girl
by ElisabethDarling
Summary: "And sometimes you didn't want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass." Rebuilding Orihime's character.
1. Tanabata

_**"Once upon a time, I was born. It is still a fact that the day you are born is the day you are most likely to be murdered. More human souls are killed by mothers' hands, than by the hands of strangers. My mother tried to murder me, but love confounded her."**_

Ito doesn't remember a moment in her life where she simply lived. She has always been too focused on surviving for something as frivolous as existence. She never plans ahead for anything and is used to surprises (good or bad) coming in and out of her life.

When she finds out she's pregnant again it is after an overdose that's landed her in the emergency room, and she doesn't know whether to call it good or bad news.

She had woken up on a hospital bed with the frail old body of her mother openly weeping beside her. Ito doesn't see her husband or son anywhere, and neither shows up for the week she is in recovery. Only her mother is there every day, crying and begging her to come back home, to live a better life.

Her son, Sora, who had just turned fifteen, was living with his grandmother at the time, and she wondered if he was too disgusted with her to come visit the hospital room, or drop by the old apartment for that matter. She missed him terribly, and so she decided she could try being better for a few months.

She doesn't think about the cells multiplying inside of her for a long time, but she thinks about ending it every day. What could she offer anyone? She already messed up so much the child she already had. She let her husband brutalize him, and make him cry. She let the world tear him apart, how could she do that to another person?

By the time she gets around to facing her problems it's too late to have an abortion. Ito thinks of mercy, she thinks of leaving the baby on the steps of a religious institute, or giving her to a rich family. She also considers smothering the child—letting it return into the safe space of death instead of forcing it to face the harsh and brutal darkness of life.

Ito will admit to trying any drugs she can get her hands on. She lives for the euphoria of altered states of mind. When the sticky sweetness of narcotics twists inside of her, she feels like she could be air. But none of that can stand up against the first time she sees her daughter. She is bewildered by her, and everything seems to change in an instance.

She is born in a room the size of a broom closet during free clinic hours at an Emergency Medical Center. It is the third day of September and the air is still sticky with summer heat. Ito wants to name her "Haka" because it means red and she comes out with the brightest mop of hair she's ever seen.

"Mom, come on. That's lame." Sora sat next to her as she held the little moving bundle in her thin arms. She stayed clean for this one, there isn't an ounce of anything in her blood that isn't supposed to be there in the first place. She's older now than when she had Sora. She's not fifteen and spindly anymore. She's at a respectable age. An age where she can have control over the way her life is dictated.

"Well do you have any bright ideas, mister cool guy?" Ito ran the tip of her finger along the soft curve of her daughter's cheek, it was new and pink. She couldn't believe that just a day ago her daughter was a sleeping mermaid in her body, and now she was real and in her arms.

"Well, yeah, I mean, I guess. I just, I did think about it, ya know!" He face heats up and he barriers his head in his arms. Ito smiles watching her son squirm by her bedside. She knows he's been excited for the baby, even if he tries to play it off as nothing.

"Well, what were you thinking?" She feels confounded by them, her children, she cannot fathom the depth of her love for them or articulate a way to show them she loves them. No one had ever loved her gently, but he tries her best as she cradles her daughter in one arm and latches onto her son's hand with the other.

"Orihime," He says looking at his sister, totally enchanted by her sleeping features. She could be like the princess from the Star Festival, living up in the heavens with a celestial God father, far away from mortal abuses.

"Isn't that a little grand?" Ito replies, apprehensive of how little she can give to a girl with a princess's name.

"No, it's perfect." _She's perfect._

"Well, it's certainly more creative than my idea. And I guess since your dad still isn't here we might as well have a name for her when we introduce them."

Sora bristles at the mention of his father. Ito is clean right now, and they moved into a different apartment, away from his dad. He isn't beat up or bruised because of him, neither is his mom. They're doing good—without him.

"Why is he coming around again?" The annoyance is clear in his young voice. "All he ever does is mess everything up."

"Hey, now," She looks petulant now, like she's fifteen again and her dad is telling her that Haru is forbidden from coming around her. "He is your father. And he's promising to stop using now. He just needs a clean place to stay. And we're still married, you know. I still…of course I still love him."

Sora rolls his eyes, "He always says that, mom. He's a jerk, he's gunna start hitting us again. God, mom, please, think about her." He says desperately as he gestures towards his sister.

"I am," Ito holds her daughter closer against her chest, "She needs a family. A whole family, not a broken one. And we can do that for her, we all just need to get along."

"Ya know, trying something over and over again that ends the same way, but trying over and over again for different results is a form of insanity."

Ito leans against her pillows and tries not to think about it. She wants a home with a yard where she can grow flowers and fruit trees. A place where her son can practice soccer and do his homework. Where she can paint butterflies onto the walls of her baby's nursery, and buy her fancy cradles and toys. She wants Haru to have a nice job, or get money that doesn't come from selling drugs. She wants him to love her gently, to be nice to their son, to be excited for their daughter.

"Just stop it, Sora." She's sullen again, but the door opens up and Haru walks in with a bouquet of white roses and sunflowers.

"I heard we had a girl," He says pleasantly. Sora cringes but Ito lights up like a firework. She tells him she loves the flowers and that she wishes he could've been there during the birth but she's just happy he's here now.

"Haru, meet, Orihime." She smiles as she settles the pink buddle baby into his arms, "And Orihime, meet, Daddy."

"Hey there, princess." He says softly and even Sora believes he's going to change for the better. He doesn't look as gaunt or tired. He seems like he's been eating and his arms don't have any visible tracks. He looks…better. Sora thinks then that maybe things will get better, maybe Orihime really is a star child, and maybe she can make everything better.

None of them realize how cruel it is to put so much faith in such a small pair of hands.


	2. The Girl Who would be God

"And sometimes you didn't want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass."

Orihime doesn't like it when her mother leaves her with the slumbering lump of her father's body while she prays in the bedroom with her friends. She doesn't understand why they pray in the bedroom either, or why it happens so frequently, because they don't attend any religious institution regularly; and even if they did, the noises that come through the thin walls of their apartment sound far from holy.

She asked her father about god once. She was sitting on his lap and breathing in his excess tobacco. Orihime watched the blue smoke swirl and rise out of the window. In the air she imagined it morphing into the soft face of a woman. It reminded her of the stone figures outside of the colorful shrines downtown.

"God is a man in the sky, babe." Her father said with a sloppy smile across his face. His eyes were wide and light, she liked how they looked when he smiled.

"What he do there?" People told her she has her daddy's eyes, and she liked that. She liked to think she was made up from pieces of him.

"He probably watches us, ya know, the hustle and bustle of everyday life." She nodded her head as he tapped his cigarette against the windowsill. Last week was her third birthday and for a present he got her a necklace with a tiny silver pendent shaped like a star. The metal felt cold against her skin, and the chill creeping in from outside made Orihime nestle closer to her father's warmth.

"Like TV?" She asked.

"Yeah, just like that."

"Mama says that too much TV makes brains mushy." Orihime commented seriously to him and he laughs. She smiled reluctantly back at him, she took what her mama told her very solemnly.

"Yeah, well, his brain probably is rotten from watching us all the time."

"Why rotten?" She asked as her fingers found his. She held her palm flat against his to measure. Orihime thought that maybe if she ate vegetables and worked on growing hard enough, her hands would be as big as his. Then she could be as brave and strong as he is.

"Because he watches rotten things happen, and doesn't do a dam—darn thing about it." His voice was still light and happy, but when she looked up at him his eyes were sad. She considered what he said as much as she could.

"He's just scared. He needs his dad too help him. Then he can be brave, just like super heroes." She liked to watch the cartoon heroes on TV, her brother Sora liked them too. They shared a bed and the sheets had super heroes on them. The heroes protected them while they slept, so no one could hurt them.

But, they're busy a lot and sometimes they don't come to the rescue. Orihime is glad because sometimes it's her daddy that hits Orihime or Sora. She doesn't know what she would do if a super hero saved her from her dad and put him in prison. Just thinking about it makes her nervous, because it's not daddy's fault he hits, and he always says sorry. Sometimes he gets confused from too much medicine and he hurts Orihime or her brother, sometimes he even hurts her mama.

Still, her daddy is very smart, and he is really good at answering questions because he seems to know everything. He leaves a lot, but he is never gone for too long. Orihime gets worried though, because with her daddy gone, who will answer her questions? Her brother is always at school, and her mama is usually sleeping during the day, so she can't ask them.

Tonight her daddy comes home very late, and her brother isn't home either. She is alone when her parents wake her up with their screaming. Orihime pulls the blankets close to her face and grips them until her chubby knuckles turn white.

"Where the hell have you been, Haru?" Her mama doesn't always talk nice to her dad, and her dad doesn't always talk nice to her mama.

"Get off my back, bitch." Most of the words they say are muffled considerably by the walls, but she hears their insults daily. She winces as glass shatters against the floor.

"No, I won't get off your back. I need to work because you're a dead beat, and I can't work if there is no one to watch, Orihime! What if one of those perverts knocks me out and snatches her, huh?"

"Well if you got a normal job—"

"You bastard!" Ito interrupts him. "You think I want to do this, huh? You can't hold down any job at all and you wanna criticize me? I pay for everything!" Orihime knows they spend a lot of money on medicine. They burn a lot of spoons to make the medicine work, and they prick themselves with needles.

Orihime isn't allowed to watch them take the medicine, but she sees it anyways. Her mama and dad have dots and bruises from the medicine that turn from purple and blue to gold and green. Most of the time she is sent into her dusty room to play with her fairy dolls while her mama and dad stay in the living room.

Orihime likes dancing in the living room with her mom. She thinks it's when she loves her mother the most. When she isn't scowling or weeping or making her eat watery vegetables or syrupy fruit from cans. Their apartment is mostly bare and worn down and sometimes it feels painfully empty, but it leaves a lot of room for dancing.

When Ito turns on the old transistor radio and the static music fills the air, the old apartment turns into a ballroom. Orihime thinks that when her mother daces she looks young and beautiful like a queen. Golden sunlight streams onto her hair, and her cheeks become full and rosy. She lifts Orihime in her arms and sways her around.

"You're mama's little star princess." She coos and cuddles her with dark splotchy arms and yellowy eyes. If Orihime looks at her too closely the spell breaks. Her mama stumbles and drops her hard on the floor, and Orihime gets bruises on her body, purple and then gold—just like her parents. She remembers she is in her dirty room alone in the dark, and her parents are breaking the only cups they own.

In the end her daddy slumps on the floor of her room, and he doesn't even say hello to her. A little while later as Orihime is falling back to sleep she hears her mother's phone ring, then the front door opens, and a pair of footsteps walks into her mother's bedroom.

She supposes they are here, once again, to pray because she hears her mother crying out to god over and over again.


	3. Are you sleeping, brother?

Sora had a lot of tics. He tapped his pencil in beats of three, his leg never stopped bouncing, and he couldn't cross the street without looking back a forth both ways three times. He couldn't eat meat because the grease and blood gave him anxiety. He hated big crowds. He didn't like being in cars, the space was too small, but buses were fine as long as they weren't packed full. His socks not matching was out of the question. He didn't like wearing colors brighter than navy, and every time his sister ran to him with her sticky fingers and dirty smiling face his first instinct was to run for the hills.

His mother called him particular. His father called him a pain in the ass. Not that he cared much about their opinions (he learned from a young age they were essentially children in adult bodies who couldn't take care of anyone or anything to save their lives), because to care for someone's opinion would require a certain amount of respect for said person that Sora didn't have for either of his parents.

He's been watching his parents destroy themselves his entire life—but they weren't going to take him with them, or his sister for that matter.

For 8 months they tried to be good, which was admirable because it's the longest they had been clean and employed while living together. But just as Orihime started crawling, Sora started seeing needle marks on his mother's arms and the vacant stare of his father's eyes return.

He couldn't bring himself to be mad—honestly, it was unfair for him to even expect more from his parents than they were capable of. So he keeps to himself—gets his own job, keeps his money hidden far away from his junkie parents, makes sure to keep up his grades, and starts making an escape plan. He feels stupid for even believing that his life with them could be anything more than—than…what it was.

But his sister didn't have to live like that. He didn't have to live like that. Not if Sora's plans worked out the way they were supposed to.

His parents didn't make it easy (not that he expected them to—but it's just so disheartening when you're 16 and working in a shitty restaurant as a delivery boy, and when you finally, _finally_ make your first $1,000—your parents find it in your sock drawer and spend all of it on cheap hallucinogens and crack—its heartbreaking.)

His mother wouldn't let him take Orihime to live with their grandmother like he used to ( _she's my baby, mine, and—and I'm not letting that old woman poison her against me like she did to you!)_ , so he had to stay with them to keep an eye on her himself. But his dad became increasingly violent and constantly pushed him around, and just when Sora thinks he can't take it anymore and wants to snap—Orihime babbles, or cries, or laughs, and he remembers what he has to lose—what he wants to keep safe.

Because what Sora understands completely is the he and his sister have been born under the skin of society—like bot flies. They have two options: say and suffocate, or escape and live.

His parents made their choice—and he had made his.


	4. Death Comes to Me Again, a Girl

Death comes to me again, a girl

in a cotton slip, barefoot, giggling.

It's not so terrible she tells me,

not like you think, all darkness

and silence. There are windchimes

and the smell of lemons, some days

it rains, but more often the air is dry

and sweet. I sit beneath the staircase

built from hair and bone and listen

to the voices of the living. I like it,

she says, shaking the dust from her hair,

especially when they fight, and when they sing.

-DL

Orihime knows that during the middle of the day when her parents are sleeping she can slip out their apartment door. She likes to play on the stairs with her friend, Hero.

The people who pass her on their way out don't think twice about seeing her on her own. She is only three, certainly, but she can talk well enough to make most people think she is older. Not that it matters—there are plenty of dirty kids that run around the dilapidated neighborhood with no adult to answer to.

Sometimes the nice old lady from apartment 42C—right by the stair case—will bring Orihime juice and sandwiches for lunch. Her name is Mrs. Tanaka, her dresses always have flowers on them, and she smells cleaner than Orihime thinks she's ever been.

"You're such a pretty little thing! Like a sweet baby fairy." Mrs. Tanaka laughs as she smooths her thumb over Orihime's cheek. Orihime was heading down to play with her friend when she saw Mrs. Tanaka heading up with a few bags of groceries and decided to help. She's only strong enough to carry the bread upstairs for her, but Orihime hopes one day she can carry both bags.

"I'm not a princess, silly!" Orihime thinks Mrs. Tanaka is so funny.

"Well, you could be someday, sweet heart!"

"Actually, I wanna, actually I want to be a donut." This makes Orihime's friend laugh very much. She likes the wrinkles that show on Mrs. Tanaka's face when she smiles—they're like happy rivers.

"I think you'd make a fantastic donut!" This makes Orihime happy. She thinks she'd be good at it too. She wonders if donuts can be sparkly, because if they can then that's the kinda donut she wants to be.

"Okay, well, I gotta go play now. I'll see you soon!" She hears Mrs. Tanaka call out her goodbyes as she shuts the door and skips down the hall to meet her friend at the foot of the stairs.

She likes Hero a lot. He is older than her by a few years, but he doesn't care that she's still pretty little and plays with her anyway. He always wears a super hero shirt, so she calls him Hero as a nickname, because heroes are her favorite thing in the whole wide world.

They like to play hide and go seek in the scarce apartment lobby and fish through the faded couch cushions for treasures. When they play school, he teaches her the alphabet and she's getting pretty good at it. Daddy thinks she's a genius.

"Oh, Hero!" She sing-songs in her silliest voice. It takes a few moments before she hears him bounding up the stairs. "Hey Hime!" His smile is missing one tooth and even though Orihime's daddy says that a fairy takes teeth and leaves candy, Hero says he didn't get any. She smiles so big when she sees him her cheeks hurt.

They decide to head down stairs into the basement to look for lost coins around the laundry machines.

"Where'd ya get that bruise from?" He asks as they trot down the creaky staircase.

She feels herself blush as she cups the ugly violet kiss on her cheek. Mrs. Tanaka never says anything about her bruises. Her eye sight isn't the best—but Orihime figures if no one says anything about the bruises then they must be normal.

(But her brother gets really angry whenever they show up on her. Deep down Orihime knows that its wrong.)

"Mommy wasn't real mommy today, she was monster mommy." She tells Hero.

"Oh." His face is hesitant. "Why did she do that?"

Orihime looks down at her small hands. Her eye lashes are flush against her full cheeks and a grimace forms across her mouth.

Early that morning she had been waiting for her mother in the kitchen…she usually feeds herself but there was no food, and her brother hadn't been home for a long time. Her tummy hurt because it was so empty and, she didn't mean too but, tears welled in her eyes.

Her mother walked into the dirty yellow kitchen to see Orihime in tears sitting in front of an empty cereal bowl.

Orihime looked up at her mother and saw something different. Her eyes looked…not there. Instead of the warm honey brown Orihime usually saw, they were mostly black—and swallowed up light like the mouth of a monster.

Her mother started throwing ceramic mugs at the walls and tearing up papers from the counter. She was screaming so loud that Orihime had to cover her ears and crouch down low into the chair. Her mother yelled " _Shut up, shut up, shut up!"_

Orihime lifted her head once to tell her mother to stop it as loud as she could—and then her monster mother used her open hand to hit Orihime across the face. The force of the slap sent her flying off the chair to land painfully onto the floor.

Orihime was shocked into silence. She saw her mother crumble onto the floor, her body shaking with gross sobbing. She started to pull at her hair and Orihime was sure she heard her mother apologizing over and over again.

Orihime slowly stood up, ignored the throbbing of her face, and stumbled over to her mother's skeleton body. She wrapped her arms around her shoulders and stroked her hair.

"It's okay, mommy. Everything will get better." She said this over and over again, and her mother embraced her hard against her chest. Orihime could feel the quick beating of her mother's pulse and it was as if nothing before had ever happened because she felt so at home beside her mother's lullaby heart.

When she looked back up at Hero, Orihime just shrugged her shoulders. "Let's just keep on playing." She said smiling.

They must've been down stairs for an hour pretending to be treasure pirates before another tired tenant came down stairs.

"What're you doing down here by yourself, kid?" Orihime looked up to see a woman, young and pretty, with dark hair all the way down her back and old make up smeared into her skin.

"I'm not by myself! Hero is right here with me!" She pointed to her sheepish friend as he sat on a dryer. The pretty girl paused, looked at Hero like he was empty space, and quirked her eye brow.

"Okay kid, you better go upstairs because the mildew has clearly gone to your head. Aren't you Ito's daughter?"

Orihime pouted. Could this pretty girl not see Hero? "Yes I am. And I do not have a mildew head, that is not a nice thing to say."

"Honey, you're down here alone. No one else is here." At this point the young woman has stopped putting her clothes into the washer and her full attention is on Orihime.

"No, look—"Orihime turned to point to Hero again but he was gone. Maybe he ran really quick upstairs?

"Yeah." The older girl said to Orihime. "Where is your mother?"

"Sleeping…how do you know her?" The little girl asks.

"We…um, work together."

Orihime nods her head and starts to walk back up to her apartment. She uses the few coins she finds from the laundry room to buy a snack from the vending machine in the lobby on the way. Her stomach feels better once she fills it with a little food.

She wonders why her friends sometimes disappeared like that…because it's not the first-time Hero ran off. And sometimes she'll make friends with the old people above or below her hall, and people will call her a liar when she talks about them because they say that her friends left a long time ago and are never coming back.

* * *

Hey! Thanks for the reviews guys :)

It's a little late I guess, since I am already 4 chapters in, but I just wanted to clarify what this story is. Disclaimer that this is all my personal opinion and you are under no obligation to agree with me.

So, from watching anime as a child/teenage/...and even as an adult, I have always been super disappointed in how male authors write female characters. Its like they've never talked to a real girl or have never tried to get to know a girl beyond surface level. Any way. Orihime's character is curious, and I like her. So, I wanted to take an imbalanced character and, I don't know, balance her out? I want to write her into something that resembles a real multidimensional female character. With this story I'm kind of giving Orihime a "hero's journey" treatment.

I'm going to try to not mess with the plot too much, but there will definitely be changes-because some of her actions just don't add up! If there were any moments in Bleach that you were like, "That doesn't make any sense" in regards to Orihime's character, let me know! I'd love t hear your thoughts.


	5. Goodbye, Shadows

Thanks for reviewing!

* * *

"If you can't sleep, I'll be there in your dreams

I'll be there in your dreams

If you can't sleep at all

And in your dreams, I'll touch your cheek

And lay my head on your shoulder.

Goodbye, shadows.

Goodbye, shadows.

If you're far away, if you can't see my face

If the world is cold, but the sun shines the same

Shut your eyes, there are bluer skies

For you're embraced in my heart.

Goodbye, shadows.

Goodbye, shadows."

Night is a curious time. The atmosphere is bright in a different sort of way—the stars make the black at the highest point of the sky bleed purple, the edges are deep dark cerulean, and the faint lights from all of the apartment windows shine like stars that've spilled out of the air. Orihime likes to pretend she is a galaxy explorer venturing into the uncharted universe—the first human to see these stellar objects.

She doesn't get much sleep anymore. Instead, she stays up and draws detailed diagrams of the alien figures she encounters with her 12-pack of crayons. It is a very tricky job because after a while they can all seem like the same person: sallow faced and scowling, with bloated guts, yellow teeth, scabby skin, and shabby stained clothing. Orihime calls them comet creatures. They like to make space princesses cry and beg. She hates them.

Orihime watches them through a peep hole her father screwed into her door (so she could safely unlock it when she knew the person knocking at night was her mother or father). She stands on a stepping stool for hours until her feet ache and become thick with callouses.

She doesn't know why she keeps watch—she never really questions it. She only knows that her heart will ache too much to let her sleep; so, she stays vigil at her post, counts every creature that comes and leaves her home, and waits to sees the pale body of her mother limp from her bedroom to lock the door in the early blue of the morning.

She knows the nighttime isn't supposed to be loud and restless—she knows it's supposed to be a time for sleeping and breathing softly, but that's how Orihime's nights have always been: anxious and sleepless.

"Remember when you used to sing me lullabies?" She says to her mother as Ito rests her head upon her daughter's lap in the middle of the day. Orihime should be starting school soon—but no one has signed her up yet.

"Never sung any to ya, kid. Sorry." Orihime pauses in stroking her mother's hair and furrows her brow.  
"But…don't you remember?"

"Remember what?" Her mother snaps softly. Orihime can tell she's walking on thin ice so she decides to tread lightly.

" _If you're far away, if you can't see my face, if the world is cold, but the sun shines the same, shut your eyes, there are bluer skies, for you're embraced in my heart…_ " She sang gently to mother.

"Kiddo, no, I never even heard that song." Orihime's confusion turns into hurt…how could her mother forget that?

"But, I remember you had a blue dress on and you told me the story about the star princess and her earth knight."

"I think you're confused with a cartoon, babe." Her mother shuts her eyes again and turns on the bulky television they have resting on the dusty floor.

Orihime lets her head fall back on to the musty cushion of the couch and turns the channels until something quiet and old comes on the screen. She likes the gray movies and cooking shows. Sitcoms make her sad because she doesn't think anyone can be as happy as the people on TV are, but if they can than Orihime's life is much sadder than she originally thought.

She'd had a rather difficult time recently. Her friend Hero had gone missing—she hadn't seen him months and whenever she asked around about him, no one seemed to know what she was talking about and Orihime was getting pretty tired of that!

"No one believes the things I say." Orihime pouted to Hero during their last conversation in the summer. She was teary eyed and a little sore from one of her mother's recent episodes.

"Whacha mean, Hime?" He said to her as they sat with their feet dangling over the railing of the apartment building's roof.

Orihime sniffed and wiped her tears on the sleeve of her blue sweater. Hero's strange silver necklace had been getting shorter and shorter recently, but she hadn't asked him about it because she didn't want him to think she cared about that kind of stuff. She'd be his friend even if he wore dorky glasses all of the time or had a weird face.  
"Daddy calls me a fibber because, because he says the people I talk to in the building haven't lived here for a long time…or, sometimes he says the friends I have can't be real because …" She felt tears welling in her eyes.

"S'okay, Orihime. You can tell me." Hero had the nicest smile. Orihime thinks she's in love with him, but doesn't want him to know because she doesn't know if he loves her back.

"Daddy says the people I say I talk to are dead." She said in a serious voice she didn't know she possessed. She saw Hero go still next to her. She tilted her head down until a curtain of auburn hair hung between her and Hero. After a few moments she felt his small hand squeeze hers gently—it was cold against her skin.

"Does that make you sad?" He asked.

"Yes." She said with difficulty. She didn't want to start sobbing, but tears were dripping off of her round face and wetting the fabric of her tights.

"Why?"

"Because dead means goodbye forever. And forever means a long time—so long that it doesn't ever stop being that way."

Her big watery eyes looked straight into his—desperate and young. Hero started to get teary eyed too.

"I'm going to miss you so much if you're dead!" She ended up shouting without meaning too. She rested her forehead hard against his shoulder.

"I'll miss you too." He said as he hugged her tight against his small body.

After he walks her to her door that night she knows she is never going to see him again. She thinks about him all the time still. She wonders if she just dreamed him up out of loneliness. But every time she hears someone jumping up the stairs the same way he did—her heart beats a little faster in anticipation to see his face.

But he never shows up. Orihime thinks of him whenever she sees eyes like his: kind and brown.

She knows in her heart that her friendship with Hero couldn't have been all make believe. It was real—she knows it has to have been real. She'd only ever loved Sora as much as she'd loved Hero, and she just can't believe something like that can be all pretend.

But…now her mother doesn't remember the lullabies Orihime remembers her singing and she wonders if _anything_ she remembers about _anything_ is true.

Later that day, when her brother comes home from work with food from his job, she asks Sora if he remembers their mother ever singing lullabies to her.

"Huh, not really. I don't think mom was ever musically inclined—even before she was…sick. That's funny that you remember that. Maybe you're remembering something from a TV show you used to watch? I used to do that all the time." He says.

"I don't think so." Orihime pouts.

"You know," Sora says between mouthfuls of noodles, "You've always been a super perceptive kid. You always had wild stories and could…like read out of nowhere! You know that's crazy right? Most little kids can't teach themselves to read." He smiles at her and she fills with pride.

"Hero taught me letters." She says.

"Which one?" Sora asks.

"Not a super hero! My Hero—my friend. He's dead." She says casually.

Sora is quite taken aback by his little sister's confession and swallows his food with an audible gulp.

"You think so?" He feels his stomach sink a little. Orihime has always been a strange kid—with a big imagination and a bunch of imaginary friends. He figured it was because she was left alone so often with strung out parents. He guesses he shouldn't be surprised about how dark her imagination gets—but to hear something like that from such a sweet little kid is jarring.

"Yeah. It makes me sad because he had to leave and I'm never gunna see him again."

"I'm sure you will." He reassures her. She just smiles a little and goes back to eating her food and humming her lost lullaby.

When she starts humming he feels his heart skip a beat. He remembers that from somewhere…it feels like forever ago, but he can recall some nights, for the first few years after his sister was born, hearing the soft sound of a song in the middle of the night.

He would wake up and look over to his sister's hand-me-down cradle and see it gently rocking as if moved by a tender hand. He always brushed it off as the baby moving in her sleep and causing the cradle to rock…but maybe it was something different.

Maybe the reason Orihime could talk, and read, and be so insightful beyond her years, despite her parent's obvious neglect and abuse, was because she had been raised all along by ghosts in the building.

He dismisses the thought as soon as it is finished forming in his head. Somethings are just too creepy to be real.

Still, much later that night, after the last comet creature makes his greedy exit and her mother locks the apartment door, Orihime dreams of a women singing softly to her. The woman's body glows like the moon and her long dark hair is braided to the side. She wears a light blue dress and softly caresses Orihime's hair. Her low humming makes the shadows disappear.

" _If you can't sleep, I'll be there in your dreams, I'll be there in your dreams if you can't sleep at all. And in your dreams I'll touch your cheek and lay my head on your shoulder."_

* * *

The lullaby is "If You Can't Sleep" by She & Him. So, I wanted to make a pre-Ichigo for child Orihime to be in love with to make her crush/love thing for Ichigo seem more believable for when she is older. Like, I want her attraction to him be more meaningful-I feel like it is meaningful of course in cannon, but I wanted to make a reason for it.

Also, 15 year old boys can't successfully run away with 3 year old babies (I know this is a story about a bunch of impossible things but this is what I am fixating on! lol). So I am making Sora 20 and Orihime 5 when they finally "escape." And next chapter will be concerned with that. I just wanted one last chapter for her early childhood before leaving her parents.

So next chapter will have a lot more recognizable characters.

Orihime's Hero's Journey continues!


	6. Everything That You Love

Everything that you love, you will eventually lose, but in the end love will return in a different form. —Kafka

"You got your back pack?" Sora asks her as he scrambles to put all of his things into his own bag and briefcase.

"Yup!" Orihime smiles cheerfully as she sits at their table with her hand in a bowl full of blue berries. It's her first day of school ever and she's very excited. She has her hair up in pony tails on either side of her head and bows that match the color of her jumper.

"And you have all your school supplies?" He wraps his laptop extension cord up before stuffing it into his back pack. He's going to drop his little sister off at school and then go to his job at the law firm just down the street.

"Yup!" She says with a mouth full of sweet fruit.

"Pencils?"

"Uh-huh." She holds up he pink pencil pouch affirmatively before placing it back inside her book bag—its bright yellow with a duck in a raincoat on the front pocket.

"Note books?"

"Yes!" She shows him the Sailor Moon note book they bought together yesterday before putting it back in her bag.

"Magical bunny rabbit?"

"Yea—I mean, wait!" She giggles wildly, "That was not on the list, Sora!"

Things have really started working out for the Inoue siblings. Sora attributed the good fortune to the fact that they no longer had any contact with their parents, which hadn't been an easy feat. The week he had finally graduated with a degree in pre-law and was starting full-time as a paralegal at his current law firm was also the same week his grandmother passed away. It had been devastating. His grandmother had raised him and he considered her his mother in nearly every regard—loved her that way too.

In the middle of planning for her funeral, with the little money she set aside for it, his mother showed up at the door step demanding money.

"I know she left me some." Ito looked worse than he'd ever seen her. Hair disheveled and skin paper thin.

"It's been 3 days, mom. No one has even started the process of dividing up her estate." He was trying to remain composed. He didn't want to fight.

"Whatever," she scoffed bitterly. "That old witch probably left you everything as a last way to screw me over."

"Yeah, the whole world is just out to get you, mom. It's all about you, even grandma's death was a plot against you. Do you know how ridiculous you sound?"

His mother lit up a cigarette and her hands shook in what Sora knew was thinly concealed rage. Despite being his mother, the two really were more like siblings. Ito was only 15 years old when she had him, and Sora was the child Ito's mother always dreamed of. At her worst, she was bitterly jealous of him and ashamed of it. What kind of mother is jealous of their own child's success? She should be happy…but she'd never really been good at managing it. Happiness that is.

She blew out smoke like a dragon in her childhood living room where she was never allowed to smoke before. "Now, is that any way to talk to your mother, you little creep?"

"Some mother." He fidgeted his hands in his lap. He wanted her to leave—wanted to finish picking out his grandmother's urn from the catalogue, wanted to tell Ito to put out her cigarette.

"Oh whatever, I gave you to best life I could, didn't I?" She puffed smoke out as she raised her hands gesticulating.

Sora was instantly angry again. "What do you mean? You just—you just left me here!"

"Yeah!" She cut him off before he could continue. "That's the best that I could do! You got food here, didn't you? You went to school. You have all your fingers and toes. You're in _college_ , for the love of god. You think _I_ was the worst mother in the world and yet here _I am_ with a child in college!"

"Don't act like you had any part of that!" He's stood up then, eyes watering. He hated the way she messed with his head. He was 20 years old. A man. But his mom always managed to make him feel like he was seven and waiting for her to come back home again.

"Oh, I had _every part of that!"_ Her cigarette was mostly glowing ash as she took her last drag and put in out on the marble face of a coaster. "You think that I couldn't have taken you with me where ever I wanted to if I had half a mind to do so? You were _mine_." The pause between them was hefty and there were tears welling up in her discolored eyes. "You were _my kid_. Okay? And I _let_ you stay here because it is what _I_ thought was best. And I knew, _I knew_ that she would poison you against me."

"You did a good enough job of that by yourself." He interrupted but she barely seemed to notice.

"But I let you stay here because, because, because it was the best place for you to be. At the time. With things—"

"Your drug addiction and dad's abusive behavior." Still she ignored him, preoccupied with her out soliloquy.

"With things, the way they were. And look at you." She gestured to him then. He is tall with strong limbs and a healthy complexion. "Perfect," She let some stray tears fall down her face, "My perfect boy." She cupped his cheeks and smiled with glassy eyes and rotten teeth. He pushed her hands away. They pass a few silent moments before she breaks them.

"So, when do you learn what the old bat left behind?" She asked while lighting up another cigarette. Truthfully, he had the paper work available to him right then. But he had left it unopened on the kitchen table. He didn't want to see it. He didn't want her to be gone.

"She did leave me everything." He said neutrally. His grandmother had told him as much. She knew better than to give her addict daughter any inheritance, she knew where it would go, and also knew that any precious family heirloom would be sold and go to the same place.

"You little shit." She says it without much venom. She takes in another drag, "So what are you going to do with all this stuff?" She motions around the room and flicks a doily. "What are you gunna do with the house?"

"Probably sell it." He sits back down on the couch and leans his head against the cushion.

"You got a new hot shot job in the city, Mr. Lawyer?" She smiles noncommittally and taps ash onto another coaster.

"Yeah. I guess." He closed his eyes for a moment of peace, but he felt the heaviness of the moment between them. He knew she was going to say something…but he didn't know what.

"I'll, uh, give you Orihime for half of it." His heart stilled in shock. His chest felt tights and he could hear the hard thumping of his pulse inside of it. He looked at her with a frown. She wouldn't meet his eyes.

"The house, I mean." She gestured around her with her cigarette in hand. "When you sell it. Give me half of the profit and you'll, uh, get your sister. No fight."

He looked away from his mother and says nothing. Of course, he's going to accept the offer. But he was horrified that she propositioned custody exchange in such a…cheap way. A child for the money from her mother's estate sale. It was poetic in a vile unsettling way.

"C'mon." He saw Ito bristle and tap her cigarette again. "I know you want her. God knows if you don't take her the authorities will. I've already seen them sniffing around the place. Bastards." She shoots him and irritated glance and looks away, clearly uncomfortable with his silence.

"You'd do that?" He asked gently. He wasn't—well, he tried leave out the judgement in his voice. "Just, give her to me?" It was his plan all along—but he had expected a dramatic fight. With police and court and a custody battle—all of which he would win of course. But to just…let her go? Was that better? He looked to her.

The smoke made the air around her misty and blue, and the sun pouring in from behind her made her slim figure glow. Her auburn hair curled around her shoulders and the shadows of her face blurred the discoloration and bumps. She looked young again. Ethereal.

"I would do _anything_ for my children." She said slowly without a hint of irony. She put the cigarette out and grabbed her purse. "So, I'll see you at the memorial this weekend. And, uh, then we can talk more about it. I'll bring her by with all of her stuff _next_ weekend. Nice little place like this will be bought up in a sec." She snaps her fingers and smiles at him like nothing happened.

As the door closes behind her, Sora sinks down his seat and wonders briefly if his mother had actually been a hallucination. But the as the weeks pass and the estate sale makes a nice amount of money, and then the house sells for more than expected, and his sister is dropped off with him oblivious of the relatively large sum of money she is exchanged for…he is just grateful that for once in his life fate seems to be working in his favor.

It'd been a year since he'd…traded his sister for half the money his grandmother's left for him, and a year since they'd heard from them. And he was doing great. Orihime was doing great. She still had imaginary friends and was still…very much a weird little kid. But she was charming! And had already made friends in the karate class he signed her up for.

As he drops Orihime off for school he feels the darkness of his mother pass over him. His sister turns around and beams at him—as bright as the sun itself. She waves and her long red hair glistens and bounces in the wind. She's strong. She's a bright twinkling star princess and all he wants is for her to grow up happy and healthy and—oops

Sora moves quickly out of the way as he hears a car horn honking at him. _Better watch that day dreaming!_ He thinks to himself with a smile as he walks down the street. _I wouldn't wanna get hit by a car, what a silly way to die._


End file.
